Page 23 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
But Nancy chose that moment to try to place her empty mug on a side table. She missed and the mug fell on her foot. She let out a yelp of pain.
Stef leapt up to restore order. Perhaps it wasn’t a good time to pursue this conversation, she thought as she sat down again. She would delay her plans of going back to London.
‘I won’t stay long now,’ she told Nancy firmly. ‘I’m sure you need to rest. I can come round another time.’
‘No, I’m perfectly comfortable now, I assure you, and I’ll just sit here fretting without someone to talk to.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
‘I am. Would you go to that cupboard above the desk?’
Stef crossed the room. ‘This one?’ she asked, pointing to a wall cupboard.
‘Yes.’
She opened it and stared at the stack of photograph albums within.
‘The one I want is the black one on the far left at the bottom. Careful. Some of the pages are loose.’
Stef eased out the battered album. Nancy was right, the binding was coming apart. She held the book in both hands and presented it to the old lady, who laid it on her lap.
‘Sit here next to me,’ she commanded, patting the sofa.
Stef obeyed.
Nancy opened the album and together they looked through the photographs inside. Here she was as a sweet, solemn-eyed baby, then as a toddler with some older children playing in a garden. There were pictures of her parents, too – though mostly of her mother, as her father was usually the photographer – then one of Nancy at six, holding up a toy chemistry set and smiling proudly at the camera. Nancy spoke of her childhood in a voice soft with emotion. ‘This is my brother Roger and my sister Helen. And this is my Aunt Rhoda.’ Nancy’s aunt was holding a cocktail glass aloft and laughing. She was tall and willowy and wore a striking black dress. Her hair was cut in a short, blunt style that emphasized her high cheekbones. ‘I think I mentioned that I have her to thank for my education.’
‘You did start to tell me. And who are these?’ Stef pointed to a small photograph of a pair of gawky adolescent boys on the page opposite.
‘Neighbours. The Hunters.’ Nancy flipped the page without further comment. And now came the school photographs. Nancy at eight or nine in a blazer too big for her and with a cloche straw hat hiding her face. A fifteen-year-old Nancy in the netball team, then older still in a smart shirt-dress, white gloves and a narrow-brimmed boater.
‘That was Founders Day, 1947,’ Nancy explained. ‘My last year at school. I should have won four prizes, but Miss Everard said someone else should have a chance so I only got two. I thought that wasn’t fair. It certainly wouldn’t have happened at my brother’s school.’
Stef smiled. She thought Nancy as a teenager looked charming with her shoulder-length dark hair combed back, her shining eyes and slender figure. She asked questions about her schooling and, returning to her chair by the fire, took the notebook from her bag to write down the subjects that Nancy had studied.
‘So why did you decide to read Zoology at university?’ she asked.
‘Biology was my best subject. And my teacher knew a Zoology professor at Prince’s College. They were building up the department after the war.’ Nancy looked livelier now and there was colour in her face.
‘They were happy to take girls?’
‘Oh yes. They couldn’t afford to be fussy. I was hurt when someone first told me that, but I came to find it amusing. That we girls were given opportunities only because suddenly they needed us. I can remember it so clearly, though, the early days of my studies. Everything seemed so splendidly new and exciting. And there were young men, Stef. Though we were all very shy together at first. Single-sex schools, you understand.’
For a moment, Nancy’s eyes were dreamy as she collected her memories. And then she began to speak. ‘I was terrified arriving at the college on the first day. I knew absolutely nobody, you see.’
Thirteen
London
Autumn 1947
The bomb-damaged clock tower of Prince’s College in Kensington was still caged by scaffolding, just as Nancy remembered from her interview back in the spring. It dominated the middle of the main quad, where hundreds of students now clustered for the first day of the new academic year, the cacophony of cheerful voices bouncing off the high surrounding buildings. Nancy hesitated under the arched main gateway and breathed in deeply to counter her nerves. She hadn’t slept much the night before from excitement.
She reached into her leather briefcase and brought out a much-folded letter, frowning as she read the enrolment instructions again. Then, glancing about to check her surroundings, she made her way across the quad towards a narrow door in the far right-hand corner. It was the entranceto the grim red-brick building that housed the Zoology department.
Room Z.271, where she was to report, was on the second floor. She followed directions on a series of notices, climbing four flights of stone steps around an echoing stairwell before passing along a lino-floored corridor with windows offering views of the quad. Room Z.271 turned out to be a poky office crammed with mismatched furniture and filled with the sound of furious typing. A grim, bespectacled woman sat behind a glass-fronted reception counter at which a short line of new students waited.
Nancy joined the queue behind a handsome, dark-haired young man wearing a long black coat, and a snippet of a girl with ginger hair. The man completed a form with his shiny black fountain pen and swept out past Nancy without a glance, but the girl, who spoke to the secretary in a soft Scottish accent, flashed Nancy a smile as she left. Now it was Nancy’s turn. She wrote down her details obediently, then asked the secretary for directions to the venue for the welcome speech mentioned in her enrolment letter.
